Summary
Our crisis-riddled world doesn’t need more heroic leaders, it needs more humanity in leadership. Our systematic review published in the Journal of Management Studies identifies humanity as a “higher-order virtue” comprised of six dimensions: empathy, compassion, forgiveness, love, kindness, and generosity. When enacted by leaders and followers, these dimensions enable the socially sustainable organizations we urgently need.
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Climate crisis, political polarization, global conflicts, loneliness epidemics, and rapidly shifting technology, today’s leaders face what scholars call a “polycrisis” – multiple, overlapping crises that make leading harder than ever. Employee engagement is at record lows, turnover remains high, and mental health challenges persist.
What if the solution isn’t more heroic leaders, or a shiny new leadership model, but something more fundamental: the virtue of humanity?
What we discovered
In our new Journal of Management Studies article, we argue that humanity – the virtue of meaningful human connection – is essential to sustaining organizations through crisis and for the long term. Yet, management scholarship has paid almost no attention to how humanity functions in leadership.
We developed a robust definition of humanity as a higher-order virtue and identified its six core dimensions: empathy, compassion, forgiveness, love, kindness, and generosity.
Think of humanity like a symphony: any single instrument might produce a pleasing sound, but all six working together creates something transformative.
How we studied it
We applied rigorous criteria from Aristotelian virtue ethics to determine which attributes truly qualify as virtuous dimensions of humanity.
Each must be:
- Learnable
- Inherently good
- Contribute to flourishing
- Contextually adaptive
- Represent a balance between vices of excess and deficiency
- Involve thinking, feeling, and action, and
- Play a part in sustaining meaningful human connections.
| The Virtuous Dimensions of Humanity | ||||
| Virtuous Dimension | What It Is | Vice of Deficiency | Vice of Excess | How It Sustains Connection |
| Empathy | Noticing and feeling what others experience | Insensitivity | Hyper-empathy | Enables understanding others’ experiences |
| Compassion | Acting to alleviate others’ suffering | Cruelty | Being overly solicitous | Shows concern for others’ wellbeing |
| Forgiveness | Overcoming negative feelings after transgression | Being unmerciful | Being a pushover | Repairs relationships after transgression |
| Love | Caring deeply for others’ wellbeing | Wrath/indifference | Lust/obsession | Forges a sense of oneness with others |
| Kindness | Warm, considerate gestures toward others | Meanness | Sycophantism | Demonstrates warmth and consideration |
| Generosity | Giving time, resources, or support beyond what’s required | Selfishness | Extravagance | Tends to others’ wants and needs |
| Table source: Authors, inspired by Newstead et al (2026) | ||||
We then systematically reviewed prior research on these dimensions in relation to leadership. Out of 61 studies identified, 24 focused on compassion, 17 focused on empathy, 10 focused on forgiveness, 9 focused on love, 3 focused on kindness, and zero on generosity.
How humanity works
The fullest expression of humanity entails noticing someone else’s suffering (empathy) and doing something to alleviate their suffering (compassion) by demonstrating support or concern (forgiveness, love) through active gestures that indicate warmth (kindness) or the use of personal resources to support or cheer the other person (generosity).
The six dimensions work in concert to sustain organizations. For example, a follower might notice that a leader appears stressed, or a leader might notice and feel concerned for a follower appearing overwhelmed – this would represent empathy. When the leader or follower take action to alleviate the discomfort or pain (stress, overwhelm) of their counterpart – it is an expression of compassion. When mistakes and transgressions occur, as they do in any longterm group, forgiveness allows individuals to let go of resentment and ill-will, repair the relationship and move forward together. When leaders and followers advocate for each other’s wellbeing and make each other feel valued – that is a demonstration of compassionate love. And finally, humanity is expressed through behaviors that are kind and generous: check-ins, thank yous, the giving of personal time, and genuine points of connection.
Critically, humanity isn’t something leaders do to followers. Leadership – and the virtue of humanity – are relationally co-created through mutual social influence between leaders and followers.
Why humanity matters now
We don’t claim humanity is the only virtue that matters. Courage, justice, wisdom, temperance, and transcendence all play vital roles. But in our current context of division and polycrisis, humanity – the virtue that facilitates our connection to one another – deserves focused attention and has the potential to inform better ways of leading and following.
The virtue of humanity isn’t a panacea. But if consciously imbued in the relational interactions of leaders and followers, it might help us create the organizations and communities we desperately need.
Why humanity matters in practice and research
Our review shows that compassion reduces turnover and improves engagement; empathy builds trust and adaptive leadership; and forgiveness supports innovation and organizational performance.
But we’re missing the full picture. Most research suffers from leader-centrism (ignoring followers); it examines virtues in isolation rather than exploring how they work together, for example, by studying compassion in isolation from empathy or other dimensions of humanity. In addition, extant research relies on weak methodologies such as cross-sectional and self-report data, which are known for their poor reliability.
The implications for managers are immediate:
- Are you hiring and promoting leaders who demonstrate the virtuous dimensions of humanity?
- Do leadership development programs cultivate empathy and compassion, or just technical skills?
- What would performance reviews look like if they evaluated the dimensions of humanity, alongside productivity?
For HR professionals and managers, this means rethinking recruitment, selection, promotion, training, and performance management through the lens of humanity.
Why managers andmanagement scholars should read the full paper
The complete article provides:
- A full description of what the virtue of humanity entails, including how it is understood from philosophical, Indigenous, and historical perspectives, and how it is enacted via its dimensions: empathy, compassion, forgiveness, love, kindness, and generosity.
- Complete systematic review findings, including all the measurement tools used to assess each of the virtuous dimensions of humanity in relation to leadership (i.e., empathy, compassion, forgiveness, love, kindness, generosity).
- An extensive research agenda with specific methodological recommendations and practical implications for managers
Read the full article: Leadership and the virtue of humanity: Conceptual clarity, systematic review, and future research agenda in the Journal of Management Studies (open access)
